Prohecy and Warmth
by TheOneTrueBear
Summary: She rolls away from him, as if his warm human skin is too hot for her to bear
1. Warm Winter Nights

Prophecy and Warmth 

A/N I have an idea to turn this thoughtful ficlet (that I came up with when I was too hot cuddling my husband. Well as hot as a british summer night gets :) into a proper B/S story. What you think?

Thanks to April for doing her grammar thing, I tried out some semi colons on my own and she say's I got them right so I'm very proud of myself.

Hope you enjoy

........................

She rolls away from him, sleepily disentangling herself from his arms to lie in dreaming isolation across an impassable ocean of linen. He doesn't pull her back into his embrace or flow with her in the perfect synchronicity of sleeping lovers, just sighs and rolls onto his back to contemplate the shadowed ceiling and listen to the faint, muffled sound of her breathing.

He used to try to hold her, keep her safely cocooned in his arms, pull her close against his broad chest and share the air she breathed. She would hold still for a few moments, just long enough so as not to be hurtful, then slip across the bed, spreading her heated skin against the cool cotton of their sheets and mumbling that it was too hot. Even now, in these cool Californian winter nights she shrugs off his embrace, shying away from the sticky contact of his warm body, to throw one leg wantonly out from under the covers and let the cold night air caress her skin. Only then is she able to sleep.

By day their relationship is perfection itself. They walk together in the sun; she smiles up at him, that devastatingly radiant smile that is her signature and her gift. She holds his hand, stands on her tiptoes to brush her lips against his. She slips her deceptively frail arms around his waist and lays her head on his chest when they dance. But by night she is a stranger to him. She hunts alone; it's new. He used walk beside her, but now he hasn't the strength. Despite his size, despite that he works out every day, despite that he has two centuries of fighting experience, he is fragile. In her dark and violent world he is weak and breakable and so she shields him from her world, and hunts alone.

She slips into their bed when her hunt is finished and kisses him with a grave and studied gentleness. Often they make love, but it lacks the playful affection of their afternoon communions. There is a guarded melancholy to her, a latent sadness that pervades her nights. At night, she is a stranger to him.

Sleep eludes him, as it always does when she distances herself from him. He wonders if perhaps it is at night that she thinks of another, of one whose chilled embrace would cool her fiery skin. If perhaps the night air's chill is to her a ghostly reminiscence of that icy lover's touch. He feels his brow crease with the thought. No. If she dreams of cold dead skin it is his own, it is a dream of a different time when love was new and she was innocence itself, of a long forgotten world where demons she faced where not her own.

He sighs and runs a large hand across his face, feeling the now familiar warmth of his own breath. It is strange how in two hundred years of death he never quite got used to the redundancy of breathing, but in less than a year of life he has completely forgotten how it felt to not need air.

Perhaps that is the cause of her withdrawal; maybe it is at night that she feels most strongly that they are different. He is certainly aware of her unnaturalness. She is too strong; he knows that she must temper the power of her tiny body in order to make love with him. She is too fast; just yesterday she caught a glass that he had clumsily knocked from the kitchen table, with a preternatural speed that had been at best disconcerting. He feels his understanding of her shadowy world slip away from him day by day. He remembers that there was a time when he had understood, when her nature had been a lustrous reflection of his own, but he feels that kinship diminish with every caress of warm sunlight on his skin.

It is not that he loves her any less; he loves her perhaps more now than he ever has. But he is also aware that, for all that love, they are not a pair. They are too different and his skin is too warm for her to bear.

She mumbles something in her sleep, so softly his dull human ears cannot be sure of what he hears, but he imagines it is a name - a name that neither of them will utter in the daylight. She never speaks his name, perhaps because she never thinks of him. She certainly never loved him; he is past now and far from her thoughts. He hopes this is the reason, but suspects it is not. He has his own reasons for avoiding the other's name. He hates to lie to her, and any mention of him would be a lie: a good lie, if there can be such a thing, but a lie nonetheless. There is guilt, too, a feeling that his silence is a betrayal of the other. It is not, of course; he swore when they parted that he would keep his secret, yet he knows his motives for keeping that promise are not noble and so he avoids his name just as she does.

He rolls away from her, pulling the cover over his shoulder so that it lifts from the bed, allowing cool air to flow between them. She murmurs again and this time he is sure it is a name. Perhaps it is time to break his oath and his silence, to tell her what she has always had a right to know. Perhaps tomorrow, when they wake together in the sunlight, he will tell her. Perhaps.


	2. Short Winter Days

**Error! Style not defined.****Error! Style not defined.**

**Error! Style not defined.** **Error! No text of specified style in document.**

Even in winter the Californian sunshine is bright and warm. She remembers that in Italy the December sun had been pale and cold, like him. No. She mustn't think of him. She tries never to think of him; he is past, long since lost to her and so she doesn't allow her self to think of him. At least not in the daylight.

She reaches out to slip her hand into the large warm one of the man beside her. Her man, and now truly a man. It had been prophesied: the Sanshu, vampire with a soul, champion for good, pivotal role in apocalypse, big reward, yada yada yada. So he is human now, a living breathing human, with a pulse and body heat. He feels her tense and looks down questioningly at her. She gives him a tight smile and grits her teeth against the sudden sensation of burning in her hand. She feels perspiration gather between their coupled palms and fights the urge to tug her hand away and let the winter air cool and dry her skin.

"Ooh, look," she covers clumsily, pulling her hand from his and pointing towards the familiar coffee shop window. "Winter warmer." She grins at him and steps backwards towards the cafe. "Two for one on hot chocolaty goodness. This offer cannot be ignored."

She has marshmallows in her hot chocolate; she has found lately that she enjoys the sweetness of them. It is a sinful treat and at twenty-four even a slayer should be more careful about the excess of calories, but she doesn't care. There is something comforting about the childish indulgence; it reminds her of her mother, and, of course, of him. Not that she allows herself to think of him. Still, she enjoys the mindless familiarity of enjoying the over-sweetened drink, just as he had.

"Buffy?" His voice startles her from her forbidden reminiscence. He knows her well enough to recognise the guilty nervousness in her eyes.

He looks so vulnerable as he touches her hand, his dark eyes asking questions she will never answer. It is better for him not to know; she even doubts that he truly wants to know. He looks younger; it's strange. In the last year, he has aged for the first time in two centuries and yet he looks younger. She likes to think it is because he is new; his body and soul have been reborn, new and innocent and untarnished. It is strange to think of him as light, but he is - he is a child of the sunlight now, bright and sanguine. She knows that she is not.

A glance at her watch tells her it is gone three and she smiles at the thought. The sun only has a few more hours of lordship left, before it relinquishes its throne to the silver night watchman of the sky. She smiles at her own clumsily poetic thoughts; he would have been proud.

She has come to enjoy winter. She likes that the days are short and the nights are long. The night is her time, after all, just as it was his. It is at night that she indulges her memories of him. She hunts alone. She doesn't have to, she has a thousand sisters now with whom to share the night. But she prefers to hunt alone; she'd rather have his memory to watch her back anyway.

"Buffy?" His voice disrupts the lazy circling of her mind, and she shakes herself. This is why she must keep the other in the night: because, if she lets him, he will invade her days. He will reach out into the sunlight and pull her back to him, surround her with the ethereal coolness of her memory until the present loses meaning and all there is is that lost forbidden time with him. This is why she tries so hard not to think of him. Because she knows that if she does, he will consume her and she will have nothing left to give to the wonderful, warm human being in front of her.

She smiles sadly at her companion. It is not that she doesn't love him. She loves him now perhaps more than she ever has, but she senses that she is losing him. That she who first drew him to the light is now losing him to that same brightness. She does not enjoy the irony that it is she now who is too dark for him. But she understands that it is true.

She has resolved that she will not fight his leaving; she is ready, perhaps even a little impatient, for the day when the divergence of their natures takes him too far away from her and he has no choice left but to step fully into the light. She will not try to keep him with her, will not try to bind him to her darkness, nor will she try to follow him. There is no place for her out there in his bright new world of vivid hope and vibrant life. She is, after all, a creature of night, of dark and righteous violence.

There is no resentment left in her, no bitterness. The night is no longer the insidious accomplice of an unwelcome calling. It is her refuge, her comfort; it is her time. Her dogged mind once again returns to him. Despite her best efforts, it gets harder each day to keep him locked away in the night. She hears his voice in her mind. He knew her so well; she understands only now that no one else has ever known her as well he did.

"Buffy." He is so concerned, so loving, she feels tears fill her eyes. Perhaps she is a fool to let him go so easily. Shouldn't she fight for a love like this? Perhaps. Perhaps she would if she did not feel so ready to spend her days alone and share her nights with just the ghost of love. It is strange, she thinks, that the other's phantom caresses, conjured by her mind to ride on chill night air and cool cotton sheets, are more real to her now than her living lover's warm and open arms.

"Are you okay?" He is right to be concerned. She is so very far away from him right now, so deeply lost. Does he know where she is? With whom? If he does, he never speaks of it, never mentions the other's name, and she is grateful for it. Perhaps one day she will tell him everything. Perhaps, when he is ready to leave her, she will tell him that it is okay, that he can go now, that she will not be alone in the night. But for now, she will preserve their charade and lie to him.

"I'm fine, Angel," she assures him with a regretful smile. She hates to lie to him, but it is a good lie, if there can be such a thing. "Just thinking about mom, that's all."

3


End file.
